Victorian Side Table — Free Plan

Subscribers should be receiving the December 2010 issue right now, with Senior Editor Glen D. Huey’s impressive Line & Berry Chest on the cover. My mother saw the picture in last week’s newsletter and immediately called to ask if I could build one for her. I responded, “We’ll see” – which is the same answer she used to give me when I asked for something I wasn’t likely to get.

The December project is a small Victorian-inspired side table that doubles as a book rack, with a V-shaped shelf below the tabletop. I have a period version of this table in my guest room and when I ran into it with my vacuum cleaner a few months back, I knocked it off the block of wood that’s acting as a foot on the end of a broken side, to keep the top level. It was broken when I bought it, and I’ve been meaning to fix that foot for years. All I need to do is slice the broken bit cleanly off the side, and shape a 3″ or so piece to fix it – how long could that possibly take?!

So I brought the piece into our shop on a Saturday, when I came in to build the I Can Do That project for the December issue. It was supposed to be a rustic “barn bench,” and I figured I could fit in the table repair as I waited for glue to dry. But when I turned the table over to get a better look at the area to be repaired, I realized it would make a good ICDT project, so I went rogue and built a reproduction of the table instead. It’s an excellent exercise in pattern routing. You can read the story, and download a PDF, here.

I got the ICDT project done in time for the Monday photo shoot, but I did not, however, get around to fixing the period piece. And it was cluttering up my cube. So now it’s back in my guest room, balanced atop the block of wood. One of these days, I should get around to fixing it. We’ll see.

• Get all seven 2010 issues on one CD (it’s 400+ pages of pure woodworking information that you can search by keyword, or browse issue by issue). It’s just $15.96 – our everyday low savings off the retail price of $19.99.